Inclusive Education Workshop: Queer History - Who Gives A F**k?

LGBTQ+ histories have long been silenced by mainstream historical narratives, both in universities and in the wider world of public history. However, in recent years there has been a groundswell of interest in queer history, both amongst students and the public, who are demanding diverse representation in the classroom, in the museum, and on screen.

In this session we’ll explore some case studies of queer public history. The National Trust’s ‘Prejudice and Pride’ season was controversial, with the tabloid press gleefully reporting a ‘mutiny’ in the Trust. Meanwhile, Anne Lister, a seventeenth-century landowner, has become an unlikely modern-day lesbian icon, bringing queer sexuality to historical drama on TV.

We’ll ask questions such as, ‘whose business is queer history?’; ‘what’s at stake when we present the queer past to wider publics?’ And, perhaps the most pressing of all: ‘whose boobs are those? And why are they in that jar?’

Dr. Amy Tooth Murphy is a Royal Holloway lecturer in Oral History, focusing specifically on oral history, queer history, public history, modern British history, and gender and sexuality.

She will lead this workshop discussing how inclusivity can be brought into the curriculum and talk about her work in the History department.